President Joe Biden announced that WNBA star Brittney Griner will return home after a prisoner swap was executed in the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. returned Russia convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, while the Americans received Griner.
While Griner will return home to be with her family in the United States, the same cannot be said for 52-year-old former Marine Paul Whelan, who was arrested in 2018 on accusations of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan was not part of the prisoner swap that brought Griner back to U.S. soil.
According to a report from ESPN’s T.J. Quinn, the U.S. had been pushing to bring both Griner and Whelan back together, but Russian officials said it was the one-for-one swap with Griner and Bout, or nothing. The United States decided to make the deal, and Whelan’s family said they understood and that the White House did the right thing.
“The Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen,” David Whelan, Paul’s twin brother, said in a statement Thursday.
During his press conference Thursday morning, Biden addressed Whelan’s status as it relates to Griner’s release, and that of another former Marine, Trevor Reed, in April.
“This was not a choice of which American to bring home,” he said. “We brought home Trevor Reed when we had a chance earlier this year. Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s, and while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we will not give up.”
ESPN’s Quinn also noted that the U.S. proposed a one-for-one swap of Whelan for Bout, but “it was a non-starter,” as Russia considers Whelan to be a different class of prisoner due to his espionage conviction.
Griner was arrested at a Russian airport last February for having hashish oil in her luggage. She pleaded guilty in Russian court in July to the drug charges, while stating that she did not intend to break the law. She was sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony in early August and had begun serving time in a penal colony in the Mordovia region of Russia.
